* As long he’s fixed them now there will be no lasting damage. But Dan Rutherford’s infamously tight grip on every dollar means he doesn’t have many staff members, particularly those who could catch something like this…

Illinois Treasurer Dan Rutherford, who is running for the GOP nomination for governor as the experienced pro who can lead the party to victory, had to junk his nominating petitions earlier this month after his campaign found a fatal wording error in them.

Mr. Rutherford now has new petitions on the street and is expected to easily qualify for the ballot when petitions are filed next month. But in the process, nearly a month of field work was undone — a bit of an embarrassment for a contender whose campaign website describes him as someone with “the professional and governmental experience” that is needed to lead.

According to Craig Burkhardt, an election-law attorney who recently joined the Rutherford campaign, the wording problem was noticed by the campaign sometime in the first week of October, about a month after Mr. Rutherford added attorney Steve Kim as his lieutenant governor running mate and began circulating petitions.

The petitions failed to include a notarized statement that they had been circulated “not more than 90 days preceding the last day for filing of the petitions.” That boilerplate language is required by law.

Oops.

…Adding… To avoid any possible confusion, please make sure to note that Craig Burkhardt was brought in to fix the problem. He wasn’t around when the mistake happened.

Hard to believe this can happen in a high level campaign that is not hastily waged. Sometimes it’s worth a hundred bucks to get it looked at. I think there’s even a standard legal one available on the Election Commission website. He’ll survive this, but it is embarrassing and nothing frosts volunteers like wasting their time.

Sometimes the simplest errors are staring you right in the face and you don’t even notice. Like leaving your glasses on top of your head and forgetting where you put them for a moment.

On the other hand, you are more likely to miss those simple errors when you are trying to keep staff at a bare minimum.

Either way, it’s good for a quick chuckle. If that is the worst that happens on a campaign - whether it be for dogcatcher, clerk, mayor or governor - you will usually be able to look back and laugh at that boneheaded moment come election day.

===One Romney source described Rutherford’s leadership as “a complete disaster” and said Romney’s campaign headquarters had to fly paid staffers to Illinois to collect signatures at Chicago-area train stations and walk precincts because the treasurer’s organization had failed to collect enough signatures.

The Romney high command, the source said, “was flabbergasted that an Illinois statewide official had no organization.”===

Paper Tiger? All we hear is Dan rutherford has been all over, and has the organization. Well, if Dan got the Organizational issues resolved, then Dan Rutherford has real issues… that Dan can’t get petitons rolled out with the correct verbage to get ON the ballot?

Keep the Tweeting up Dan…I needed to know you did laundry this weekend, while you had to redo petitions.

Rutherford, on the campaign trail, is saying that one of his attributes is that he is hands on. This type of hands on work doesn’t benefit the campaign, and it won’t benefit the state to have a hands on person who doesn’t know what they are doing attempting to run this state.

I tell the kids I know, “Put my number in your cell phone under ‘Attorney.’ If you get in trouble, tell them that’s who you want to call. If you call me first, I’ll call your parents and you won’t have to.”

This is interesting. My parents (who were repped by Rutherford in the GA for years) got some letter recently with copies of Rutherford petitions in the mail for them to circulate which they thought a little odd because while they are regular GOP primary voters and probably will vote for Dan they’ve never worked on a campaign before at all.

Rutherford is short staffed not because of his fiscal policy with his campaign but because he’s just that difficult to work with. One of his staffers/drivers quit this weekend in the MIDDLE of a commute from Pontiac to the burbs.

“Prosecutors say that in President Obama’s case, nine of the petition pages were apparently forged. Each petition contains up to 10 names, making a possible total of 90 names, which, if faked, could have brought the Obama total below the legal limit required to qualify.”

Dan would have made sure the petitions were right if they had a picture of him throughout or they were a draft tweet. Dan cares about Dan. Administering an office is just an undesired sideline from his mission to achieve the highest level his ego desires.

- Norseman -, make sure the OW/Bill petitons are looked at by someone. I will be busy tweeting about …whatever …

To the Post,

I hope no one thought I was taking issue with Craig Burkhardt. No one trying to “correct” the issue should take the blame away from those who created the crisis.

Penny-wise and pound-foolish, indeed, - Ray del Camino -!

Remember, the first and most important decision Dan rutherford made was Steve Kim, … “Oh! Steve Kim! That guy?”, and the second decision was to hire someone to “correct” petitons that were not correct in the first place.

Details are not Dan Rutherford’s strong suit, unless it makes a Sweet…Tweet.

Word: Not much effort. Anyone involved in politics should remember it and one quick google search found many articles about it. And the article also referenced Hillary Clinton having problems with petitions too. My point wasn’t to bash; but to reinforce that issues with petitions aren’t as uncommon as they should be. There is a bit of irony in it though related to Obama as his supporters challenged all of his opponents petitions as he got his start in politics.

That boilerplate has been in Illinois’ peititions for a long time and this is not Dan Rutherford’s first time to the rodeo at the Board of Elections. You’d think if he didn’t have an election law lawyer on board at the begining he might have wanted to check out the petition himself for all the times he’s done this.

I hate losing, and I am tired of Dopey campaings making amateur mistakes, and making terrible decisions, all in the name of My Party losing time and time again. Use your “search” engine.

These 4 running for governor, only hear how great, how wonderful, how “special” they are, how smart …

It is not my place to tell them how great they are. They have those around them to do that …

They all need to be better, do better, or the snark, or the mocking, or even the unsolicited advice helps, then that is good.

No one is listening to me, anyway, except you…

Every time you make it about me, it just reinforces the fact of the post, like being grossly unprepared to have petitons out there that will not pass muster, all the while tweeting about meals, yeah, they are going to hear about it.